Tuesday, December 24, 2013

“We come to celebrate the birth of Jesus, that moment when the God
who had existed before all ages took on human flesh for our salvation.
In Jesus Christ, God takes on human flesh and he teaches us both who God
is and what it means to be human. The Christmas story is more than just
a fascinating fairy-tale: a wonderful story of simplicity set in the
bleak and austere beauty of a cold winter’s night.

There is no doubt that the story of Christmas is fascinating. It
contains – even within its most commercialised versions – something
which makes us stop and think, to realise that life is deeper than its
commercialised depiction and that, in the end, all our hustle and
rushing may leave us satisfied for the moment, yet leave us afterwards
with just a void.

We begin to celebrate Christmas at that moment in which we stop and
pause. We begin to celebrate Christmas when we leave the hustle and
bustle aside. Coming here this evening, we will all have somehow shifted
gear emotionally, from the hustle of the preparation to this moment of
collective calm and serenity which we share not just with one another,
but with Christians all around the world, even in places torn apart by
conflict; even in homes where relations are frayed; even among those who
have no home, but who experience Christmas through the care of others.
Christmas can and must change hearts.

Christ brings people together to think differently about who we are
as individuals and as the family of humankind. Christmas spontaneously
releases generosity. I would once again like to express my thanks for
the wonderful response to my Crosscare Food Bank appeal.

Crosscare
received over 70 tons of food: nothing of luxury, but simple basic food
for families who might otherwise not have had enough to eat in these
days. These are our neighbours, not just in the broad theological sense;
they are indeed our next-door neighbours, people living in this city
and in this diocese.

When Jesus takes on human flesh he teaches us who God is. At the
moment of his birth, the good news reaches out to only a few and indeed
to the unexpected. The birth of kings is usually celebrated within the
halls of royalty and announced with trumpets. Jesus is born in poverty
and defencelessness. He is revealed only to shepherds, nomads who like
himself do not have a fixed home. These shepherds are not the tinselled
shepherds of our Christmas cards: they are rough and dirty. They were
considered impure and were excluded from the worship-life of the
community. Jesus is revealed just to these marginalized. Life in the
inns and the hostelries, which had no space for the new born Jesus, goes
on without noticing what is happening.

Jesus’ birth reminds us that God – then and today – will only be
recognised and understood by these, to use the well-repeated word of
Pope Francis, who “smell of the sheep they tend”, rather than of the
sweet perfumes of the noble and the elegant. Jesus reveals to us that
God is not to be found among those who flourish in the superficial, but
in the real world where people survive to make ends meet.

Jesus takes on human flesh and he teaches us what it is to be a human
being. The essence of our humanity is not to be found in any
self-created comfort zone, where the harshness of life is covered up or
placed conveniently out of sight or where the rawness of human
relationships is romanticised in superficiality.

The God revealed in Jesus Christ is not the God of the magic-wand who
turns the challenges of life, Cinderella-like, into a fairy tale. Jesus
tells us that being human is about being really authentic. If the only
cold and snow we really encounter at Christmas is the cotton wool and
spray of the shop windows, then we miss the message of Jesus and our
lives will remain within the artificial and superficial. If we perfume
away the deeper realities of what life is about – our own lives and the
lives of those around us – then we reject the love of God revealed in
Jesus Christ which alone can save us and change us.
The story of Jesus birth is not just a nice fairy tale. It is also about
the harshness and the sinfulness and the self-centredness which exists
in human hearts which Jesus came to change and which can so easily be
institutionalised and consolidated into structures in society which
entrap and imprison. Church and State have separate roles; faith does
not impose any particular political or social order. Politics and
economics are never an end in themselves. Harshness and corruption and
disregard can become consolidated in any model of society, numbing or
replacing that vision of the prophecy of Isaiah, which we heard in the
first reading: lifting up the yoke that is weighing on our brothers and
sisters, breaking the bars which weigh heavily across their shoulders,
and removing the rod of oppression and abandonment which frustrates
their aspirations.

Christmas is not just a day, it is a way of life, where day after day
the focus of politics and economics – and above all of the choices we
all make in our own daily lives – always contain within them, and not
just as something external and extra, a preferential love for the poor.

Politics and economics are at the service of people and their true
effectiveness is to be discerned and measured – before, during and after
austerity – in how they respond to the needs of the poor and the
marginalized.

Jesus takes on human flesh in poverty. He becomes poor for our sake.
Addressing the needs of the poor and the marginalized is not just about
the politics of poverty or even of doing things for the poor; it is
about identifying ourselves with true poverty, about a life of
self-giving rather than a life of self-aggrandizement or accumulating
wealth. Following Jesus’ poverty is not just about politics and
economics; it is about how we live. None of us would be here this
evening if we had not encountered and been accompanied on our way by men
and women who followed the path of the self-giving love of Jesus and
gave themselves for us. This very evening there are parents with meagre
means who are bringing happiness to their children with small gestures.

Today and tomorrow the loneliness of many who live on their own will be
brightened up by someone who calls on them; the hearts of many mothers
and fathers will be warmed up this night by that long-awaited phone call
from a sadly-missed son and daughter who had to emigrate. It is not
enough to talk or philosophise about the poor: the follower of Jesus
must meet the poor and know in their hearts what poverty and loneliness
mean.

Christmas is a Feast of humanity and what is best in humanity.
Perhaps the most striking – if indeed the saddest – story I listened to
during this entire year was a story told to me by a young man. He had
been a very talented young boy, but at school he was very fragile and
insecure and uncertain and vulnerable. He had two teachers. One took up
his fragility and vulnerability and gave him confidence and
encouragement and brought out the very best in him. The other noticed
that same vulnerability and fragility, but betrayed him, humiliated him
and sexually abused him. In the world around us, each of us can look at
the same reality of the life of others and can react in opposing ways:
through giving and encouraging and challenging and rejoicing in the
other’s achievement, or through disregard, disinterest and exploitation.

Saint Paul’s Letter to Titus which we heard just now, reminded us
that when “God’s grace was revealed in Jesus Christ he made salvation
possible and taught us what we have to do is to give up everything that
does not lead to God”. Jesus takes on human flesh and tells us who God
is and what it means to be a human person. In Jesus God and humanity are
united and we learn that the way to the fullness of our humanity is in
following the way of Jesus, who showed us who God is by becoming poor so
that we can be saved.

Our reaction must be to recognise that God: not just to recognise God
with the momentary emotion of this evening, but to join with the
shepherds and the heavenly host to worship him, to render glory to the
God in the highest who is revealed in Jesus Christ and to pray that
God’s kingdom will be spread by us in such a way so that all can enjoy
the peace that he alone can bring.